Quote

I sometimes think novelists write about sex in order to avoid boring themselves to death.

Walker Percy

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Walker Percy
Age: 73 †
Born: 1916
Born: May 28
Died: 1990
Died: May 10
Author
Novelist
Philosopher
Physician
Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
Sometimes
Writing
Novelists
Think
Avoid
Thinking
Boring
Sex
Write
Death
Order

More quotes by Walker Percy

Image
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.
Walker Percy
Image
As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
Walker Percy
Image
Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.
Walker Percy
Image
Children notice things first, people later.
Walker Percy
Image
Hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upsidedown: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me only the haters seem alive.
Walker Percy
Image
If I had the choice of knowing the truth or searching for the truth, I'd take the search.
Walker Percy
Image
Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?
Walker Percy
Image
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Walker Percy
Image
What is the nature of the search? you ask. Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me so simple that it is easily overlooked. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island.
Walker Percy
Image
It is not a bad thing to settle for the Little Way, not the big search for the big happiness but the sad little happiness of drinks and kisses, a good little car and a warm deep thigh.
Walker Percy
Image
We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.
Walker Percy
Image
I don't like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you're described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom's Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
Walker Percy
Image
Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.
Walker Percy
Image
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Walker Percy
Image
A good title should be like a good metaphor. It should intrigue without being too baffling or too obvious.
Walker Percy
Image
Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral.
Walker Percy
Image
One of the peculiar ironies of being a human self in the Cosmos: A stranger approaching you in the street will in a second's glance see you whole, size you up, place you in a way in which you cannot and never will, even though you have spent a lifetime with yourself, live in the Century of the Self, and therefore ought to know yourself best of all.
Walker Percy
Image
For the world is broken, sundered, busted down the middle, self ripped from self and man pasted back together as mythical monster, half angel, half beast, but no man...Some day a man will walk into my office as a ghost or beast or ghost-beast and walk out as a man, which is to say sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher.
Walker Percy
Image
Like many young men in the South, he had trouble ruling out the possible. They are not like an immigrant's son in Passaic who desires to become a dentist and that is that. Southerners have trouble ruling out the possible. What happens to a... man to whom all things seem possible and every course of action open? Nothing of course.
Walker Percy
Image
Americans are the nicest, most generous, and sentimental people on earth. Yet Americans have killed more unborn children than any nation in history.
Walker Percy